But we must remain alert to the possibility that one day we might find archaeological evidence of past life on Mars.Īdmittedly, this seems very unlikely. Similarly, when we see a doorway, or a face, or a spoon, on Mars, it's all too easy to dismiss it out of hand. The problem is that if someone presents me with a photo purporting to show a flying saucer, I know that the odds overwhelmingly favour it being a fake, and so I'm likely to dismiss it rather than wasting my time examining it carefully. In among the rubbish, perhaps there may be one or two photos or videos that really could stretch our current knowledge. But as scientists, we must keep an open mind. The vast majority of these photos are probably fakes, or mistaken photos of familiar objects such as weather balloons. Meanwhile, we continue to be bombarded with photos purporting to show UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) or UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). But nearly all our searches have been on the nearest few stars, and so in a sense the search has barely started. For years, SETI scientists have been searching the skies for signals from other civilisations, but so far we have found nothing. There's a similar story with the broader search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). But suddenly finding an artefact such as a doorway, or a spoon, seems unlikely. We may yet find some fossilised relics of ancient cellular life. It is still possible there may once have been life on Mars. And despite decades of searching for evidence of life on Mars, we have found nothing. As astronomer Carl Sagan said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.įollowing this maxim, scientists seeking evidence of extra-terrestrial life demand much stronger evidence, than, say, someone looking for a geological formation. If I were trying to do a cover-up, I wouldn't be releasing the photos! So a conspiracy doesn't seem very likely.īut there's also a lesson here for serious searchers for alien life. Reasonable explanations won't deter the conspiracy theorists who say the doorway really is evidence of life on Mars, and maintain that scientists are engaged in some sort of cover-up. And getting false positives – seeing a predator where there is none – is better than not seeing a predator who then eats you. We likely evolved this tendency because spotting important things like predators or faces, even when the light is poor or they are partly obscured, gave us an advantage. Scientists call our tendency to do this “ pareidolia”. The sad fact is that when presented with an unclear or unfamiliar image, humans try to turn it into a familiar-looking object. And who hasn't seen a face in the clouds? Worse, the “doorway” joins the even longer list of wacky images like the cornflake that looks like Australia, the cats that look like Hitler, and so on. On closer examination, each turned out to be a natural geological formation. The face on Mars, the spoon on Mars, and the cube on the Moon. Instead it joins the face on Mars, the spoon on Mars, the cube on the Moon, and all the other things seen in photos from space that turn out not to be as exciting as we thought. It would have been so exciting if it had been a real doorway. But the rover soon succeeded in collecting a pair of rock samples in quick succession.Such a pity. The rover's very first attempt to collect a rock sample failed. This is not the first time the Perseverance team has had to overcome a sampling hiccup. The rover has equipment that can do some analysis on board, but the hope is that a future Mars mission will be able to retrieve and return the rover's rock samples to Earth. The goal is to take rock and soil samples to assess the crater for signs that it once hosted life. It is exploring Jezero Crater, which was once a river delta. The Perseverance rover landed on Mars on Feb. We are going to do that here," she added. "One thing we've found is that when the engineering challenge is hundreds of millions of miles away (Mars is currently 215 million miles from Earth ), it pays to take your time and be thorough. "This is not the first curve Mars has thrown at us - just the latest," Louise Jandura, chief engineer for sampling & caching at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in the blog post. Seeing things on Mars: A history of Martian illusions Voyager to Mars rover: NASA's 10 greatest innovations Mars on the cheap: Scientists working to revolutionize access to the Red Planet
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